Mrs. Cat: 1; Sophistacat: 0

“Where are you?” came the cat call from the living room.
“I’m in my Happy Place!” I responded. My usual smartass answer when I pretend to be irritated.
“He’s at the fridge!” Kitten, sucking up to her mom.
“Yeah,” I admit, “It’s my happy place.”
From the living room: “You can tell.”

Grrrrrr.

:)

On a related note, I saw an article today that indicated overweight people seem to have better memories. I guess that’s evolved so they can remember what their feet look like.

Outside my picture window

To the left, you can just see the Northwest corner of the graveyard.

To the right, a young couple is walking down the street, pushing their newborn in a stroller.

At the bottom is a baby rabbit, hidden and fed by the grass I haven’t mowed yet.

At the top, I can just make out the lower branches of a tree where a hungry owl nests during the day.

Centered in the background is a group of children playing in their backyard. I see jump ropes and baseballs.

Centered in the foreground is a drug deal going down in the street. A young white girl gets out of her car as an older black man gets out of his. They meet between the cars with hands outstretched. Her green is folded; his is rolled. It’s a smooth transaction, with no fumbling or hesitation. They’ve done this before.

Birth. Death. Predator. Prey. Innocence. Cynicism. All framed within a rectangle of glass.

(Still) Life.

That One Jimmy Buffet Song

I went to my brother-in-law’s restaurant for lunch yesterday, and thoroughly enjoyed my food. He doesn’t read this blog, by the way, so I’m not currying favor here.

I had the double cheeseburger, and it was absolutely perfect: huge, uneven patties of ground chuck with a tiny bit of char; thick slices of cheese dripping from all sides; crisp, cold lettuce and tangy onions; grill-warmed bun.

It was the apotheosis of double-cheeseburgers.

The seasoned crinkle-cut fries, usually a highly-anticipated complement to the burger, faded into insignificance in the face of the tower o’ meat. Besides, I needed both hands to handle the burger.

I’m hoping at some point he’ll ask me to redesign their menu, because I already have the perfect name for this masterpiece: the five-napkin double cheeseburger.

The restaurant is a good half-hour away from us. I’m glad I don’t live any closer, because I expect my arteries would slam shut after a couple weeks.

I’m hungry, now. What’s for lunch?

Got Swine Flu?

I was watching the news last night because Mrs. Cat had taken over the computer and I was too lazy to get up and change the channel after Castle went off (but the remote is way over therrrrrre!). The anchor droids were ecstatic because they’d managed to find some local connection to the Swine Flu brouhaha currently rooting through the airwaves, and got to show scary pictures of people coming into our airport wearing surgical masks.

We had the Closed Captioning on because the litter was asleep, and I noticed that whoever is in charge of it really wasn’t very good at keeping up. Since I know the vapid piles of clothing behind the anchor desk are just reading from a TelePrompTer, wouldn’t it make sense to load that script into a scroll across the bottom of the screen? Someone’s already typed it up once; why duplicate the effort? You might miss some “light-hearted banter” in between segments, but have you really missed anything?

Pride on the move: Travel Journal – Sunday

We get up whenever, nibble on breakfast, lunch, or both (depending on when we get up), then throw everything into the Catmobile and strap in the litter. Kitten loads up the CD player, the rest of us take our insulin, and we’re gone. Top off the tank in town, then turn around and pick up the back roads again. We climb into a typical mountain Spring day – sunlight pooling in rocky hollows, snaky tendrils of mist giving away the location of unseen streams, and sprays of dogwoods in bloom looking like clouds hung up on the balsam and birch trees.

Another trip through the tunnels, like the world’s slowest strobe light, and we’re back into the local version of civilization. A few hours on the highway and we’re home and glad of it. It’s nice to travel and visit family, but I missed my computer, and Mrs. Cat missed catnapping on our bed, which is larger than any Mama Cat has.

It’s a good day.

Pride on the move: Travel Journal – Saturday

Having worn Cub completely out the prior day, he lets us sleep in all the way until 9:00. The various members of the Cat family do their various morning routines, with the adults taking turns shepherding the offspring towards something resembling preparedness.

Food follows, then we all climb into the Catmobile again; Mama Cat has errands to run. Down off the mountain and into the madding crowd of motorcyclists. I notice several businesses in town that are no longer open, and this reaffirms my general opinion of Indian business sense. Exhibit A: in a time of unprecedented building and growth on the reservation, the only hardware/lumber store in the area has gone out of business because the owner’s prices were too high. I was taken with an impulse to call him up and remind him that historically, the Cherokee didn’t scalp people, and the fact that he had a local monopoly was no reason to break with tradition. Exhibit B: The Indian-owned motorcycle repair shop was closed for the weekend, while the white-owned repair shop was open and had a huge crowd. Let’s see…50,000 motorcyclists have come to my neighborhood, far from their usual mechanics and parts suppliers. I make my living doing mechanical work on motorcycles. Nah…no reason for me to stay open. Dumbass. You deserve to fail.

Errands take us into neighboring counties, and we chew up the afternoon. I make a quick side trip to a local library in order to get an Internet fix, and this allows me to drive back to the cottage without shaking too badly.

Another dinner, and then Mrs. Cat and I head back to town, ostensibly to pick up some more kibble for Cub, but really to snag an hour alone. On the way back, we run into a multi-departmental cooperative task force, who has set up a D.U.I. checkpoint at one of the three exits from the reservation. They had pulled no less than thirty vehicles into the median and since it was just after dark, most of them had their lights on. I was sorely tempted to crank up some techno music, but Mrs. Cat dissuaded me by the simple act of threatening to break my paw if I reached for the CD carrier. (She knows me so well.)

We demonstrated that we were law-abiding kitties, properly papered, just taking some milk home to the pride, and we were allowed to continue. I thought the whole thing was overkill since the road they had staked out can be closed by a big gate in the case of treacherous weather. It would have taken three people maximum to run the checkpoint. Four if you wanted a transport van there. I hope they made enough in tickets and fines to justify all the overtime. It was a groovy lightshow, though.

Pride on the move: Travel Journal – Friday

Loaded Mrs. Cat and Cub into the Catmobile, waved goodbye to the palatial Cat Estate, and headed up the road to retrieve Kitten from Mama Cat’s cottage in the mountains.

It was a perfect day for traveling: crisp blue skies, not a great deal of traffic, good tunes on the radio. As much as we love Kitten, we enjoy being able to listen to our music when we’re on the road, which we can’t do when she’s in the car.

We leave the lowlands and the uplands, and enter the mountains proper. I take the back roads, and we watch the temperature leave the low-90s and hover at the top of the 70s. Off with the AC and open all the windows. I’m not one of those that feels compelled to blow the car horn every time we go through a tunnel, but Cub enjoys the experience anyway.

The mountains are stoic and timeless, with swaths of green slowly making their way to the tops. We hear birdcalls, rushing streams, crickets and frogs and, as we enter the valley, the gentle susurration of 50,000 Harley Davidson motorcycles.

Oh…it’s that weekend.

We drift into the homestead right about dusk. Mama Cat, having been alerted to our approach via the cell, has a country dinner awaiting us. We eat too much and enjoy ourselves thoroughly. We repair to the rocking chairs on the porch, but have to abandon the space to the predatory, bird-sized mosquitoes that are attempting to make off with Cub.

Soon after that, we all go to bed and drift off to the sound of the creek outside the windows. It’s a good day.

Now let's change the kerning!

I’d forgotten how irritated I got by constant rewrites. All that tweaking of minor details and arguing about which of three synonyms is the best choice.

I have a client that asked for a Unique Positioning Statement, which I was perfectly willing to give him. One hitch was that I use UPSs as an internal document to inform the rest of the marketing efforts, and he wants to use it as an external document, like a Mission Statement or something.

In the course of doing this thing, I created a very easy, very powerful instrument for generating marketing hooks, taglines, etc. It’s a simple, beautiful, one-page form, and I impressed all hell out of myself in bringing it to life.

So I filled out this awesome page, and sent it to the client, explaining that he now had five hooks and at least ten taglines – all consistent with each other (for campaigns) as well as being true to his focal group and his strengths. His reply was to say that it was nice, but it didn’t have a UPS anywhere.


Nice? Nice? Dude, the only way this could be any easier would be if it had a handle on the side that spun the sections into alignment for you. And you’d have to strap C-4 to it to get a bigger bang out of it.

No matter. I wrote a short paragraph for him – three or four sentences –and sent them on (also identifying the section of the form they were pulled from). He tells me in his reply that he wanted one sentence.

Now, I knew that if I replaced the periods with semicolons and sent it back, he’d be pissed, so I broke out the kettle and the thesaurus and boiled it all down into one well-balanced sentence. It’s a sentence that could be tweaked endlessly, so I don’t anticipate a laurel and hearty handshake in the next reply.

I’ll keep at it until he’s happy – after all, that’s what I’m in the business for – but man I hate constant rewrites.

Judge not...

So what I’m gathering from headlines on the fluffy entertainment sites is that Miss California was but one step away from being the next Miss USA, until she happened to voice an opinion that differed from a gay judge’s. Is that about right?

Let’s set aside the question of whether she was punished for her position on gay marriage. Let’s not worry if this marks the end of her pageant career. I think the most relevant question is:

Who the fuck decided that a gay man would make a good judge for a tits-n-ass contest?

When I heard that Perez Hilton was the judge in question, I immediately thought of this exchange from Kiss Kiss Bang Bang:

Harry Lockhart: So…still gay?
Gay Perry: Me? No. I’m knee-deep in pussy. I just like the name so much, I can’t get rid of it.

I don’t know who decided that gay men were the experts on all things feminine (though I suspect the Bravo Network had something to do with it), but when you really look at that assertion, it’s fucking ridiculous. If you want to attract a straight man, whose advice would you follow? Lance Bass’ or Salma Hayek’s?

Admittedly, gay men have an advantage when it comes to fashion, because they’re in key positions in that industry already. But fashion isn’t really for women, anyway. I know I’m not the first one to state that today’s models look more like adolescent boys than adult women. I know not to mix plaids with stripes, and to make sure the important bits are covered. After that, I don’t really give a shit.

I’ve also noticed that gay men to adopt the worst character traits of women, in that they tend to be shrill, cutting, and venomous (Perez has apparently shared his expert opinion on his blog that Miss California is a bitch). Is that who you want to be getting advice from on how to comport yourself?

So there you have it, gentle readers. Someone in their infinite wisdom decided that this young woman

should be judged by this sterling arbiter of good taste, healthy living, and fashion know-how

“Hyper” isn’t always a bad thing

So we went to have Cub poked and prodded today. He had an evaluation to determine which of the available therapies (Speech, Occupational, etc.) he would benefit from.

It was a good day. Everyone was completely taken by how a-damn-dorable he is, and he blew them away with his development. At one point, he was supposed to stack blocks up, which he did with no prompting (it’s one of his favorite things to do), and the evaluator was going to make the note that yes, he had successfully done this task. I asked her if she’d really looked at the blocks he’d chosen. Cub had deliberately picked out the colored blocks from all of the plain wooden ones, and had stacked them in the ROY G BIV order.

On another test, he was supposed to identify items in pictures, and one of them was a cat. The evaluator couldn’t get him to say it, and was about to mark it as a missed question until I pointed out that Cub had written “C-A-T” on his paper each time she’d asked “What is this?”

She was good with him, don’t get me wrong, but I think these behavioral specialists tend to get locked into their own particular line of inquiry, and miss the gestalt. I’m glad they allowed us to hang around while they administered the tests, because we could help connect the dots. For all the words Cub has, he’s still pretty non-verbal, so we could translate and give context, or prompt him with substitute words to test his phonemic range.

One of the things that has tickled us lately is Cub’s surge in spelling and apparent reading. We’ve been working with him on sight words and simple words – we have a few DVDs that we leave running most of the day – and he’s really absorbed it. This was most obvious when the evaluators sat down with him in front of the alphabet blocks and he started spelling all sorts of things, even pronouncing most of them. It’s kind of creepy, though, when he starts spelling out words we know aren’t on his shows or in his books. I keep waiting for “REDRUM” to show up. Fortunately, his letter board only has one “R”.

[Side Note] Speaking of the DVDs, Mrs. Cat and I were talking about that recently. With Kitten, we homeschool, following a fairly traditional curriculum in terms of basic Grammar, Language Arts, and Mathematics. Her school day is structured for the most part, with certain subjects done on certain days and at certain times. With Cub, on the other paw, we’ve settled into what’s called an “unschooling” pattern, which is putting kids in the general vicinity of educational materials, and hope that some transference takes place. It wouldn’t work for Kitten (or, I suspect, for most kids), but it seems to be just the thing for Cub. Go, us.

At the end of it all, Cub has gotten a tentative diagnosis of hyperlexic and hypergraphic. For those that are allergic to Latin roots, that means he’s reading and writing at a much higher level than most three-year-olds. We’re all excited because this gives us a very strong opening to exploit in developing his communication.

Isn’t that just the glass house calling the stone black

I got a call from a client today. It seems that even though I did some pro bono work for him, he still needed an invoice to file with his board of directors. As I was filling it out, it occurred to me that my invoices didn’t match my fee schedule sheet, which didn’t match my letterhead, which didn’t match…you get the point.

I just found it ironic that after yesterday’s post, I hadn’t even taken the time to do the basic design work to make sure all of my business documents looked like part of the same set. They were close, but...

Rest assured, that oversight has been corrected. All of the documents now have the same four fonts (deliberately and rationally chosen, thank you very much), the same layout, and the same design elements. The only exception is my brochure, which is getting updated soon, anyway, so I'll wait on that.

Font Snobbery

My last couple of projects were as concerned with Graphic Design as they were with copywriting, so I’ve been studying up on typography in general, and the underlying logic of font choice in particular.

I’ve complained before about the overwhelming use of Papyrus, and I’ve found I’m not alone in that.
http://esotericappeal.typepad.com/papyrus/

Today, I ran across an article about the creator of Comic Sans, who wishes people would just stop. http://online.wsj.com/article/SB123992364819927171.html

Then there’s the growing backlash against Trajan.




No matter which font you mention, it will have its lovers and haters, but I think most people that bother to have an informed opinion will agree that it’s the indiscriminate use of a particular font that gets under their skin. There are thousands of fonts out there, and no need to use the same one for everything. Jokerman may tickle you personally, but you don’t send out your company newsletter in it. Similarly, putting large blocks of text in Blackadder ITC should be a capital offense.

If you can’t explain exactly why a certain font (or combination of fonts) should be used, don’t just randomly grab a “cute” font from Word’s menu; stick with the basics. A sans serif for short blocks of text or headlines, a serif for large blocks of text, a monospace if you’re programming or doing a lot of column work.

You can be as avant-garde as you want in your personal notebook, but if you send an e-mail in LINES,

you will end up on the “blocked senders” list.

And here’s something else I wish I’d made:
http://www.collegehumor.com/video:1823766

A little of this, a little of that

Mrs. Cat’s cooking tip of the day: When you’re mixing up the base for your stir-fry, add a little peanut butter to it and let it melt before you toss in your veggies. This is particularly tasty if you’re a fan of Thai food and don’t want to take the time to mix up a separate batch of satay.

Today’s random reminiscing: spending a whole car trip stretched out on the shelf in the back window of my dad’s Plymouth, reading a book.

I saw bats flittering around yesterday, and today I heard the first cicada. Spring is finally here. I’m hoping that tomorrow a bat will catch the cicada.

I’ve been getting a few more freelance jobs, which is good, but I haven’t gotten anywhere near the prices I’ve wanted for doing them, which ain’t. I’m hardly in a position to refuse work, but it annoys me that people have such low expectations as to what it should cost to do these things. Would you edit a 35,000 word book for less than $300? (I did turn that one down.)

I wish I’d made this:

Sing those songs that offend the censors

I was listening to the All Request show on our local oldies station while I cleaned up the kitchen tonight. The station has a broad format, playing anything from the 50s to the early 80s, so it’s entirely possible to hear The Four Tops followed by Cream followed by ABBA followed by Mr. Mister.

At one point, “Money for Nothing” by Dire Straits came on. I was mildly annoyed that they trimmed off the overture until Sting’s final, drawn-out “I want my MTV” right before the drums kick in. I was really annoyed that someone had elected to excise the entire second verse, presumably because it contains the word “faggot.”

I’ve had gay people explain to me that they felt threatened by the “tyranny of the majority,” which I feel is an excellent, valid point. Mob rule, as a rule, is not big on logic and nuance. But does that mean we should immediately capitulate to the tyranny of the minority? No it does not. Demanding that everyone else conform to your particular worldview is the mark of an asshole, regardless of whether you’re in the majority or the minority.

When the song was released, there was also some minor controversy over the line “Bangin’ on the bongos like a chimpanzee.” I suppose the infinite number of monkeys managed to put together a protest letter before finishing up that draft of “The Tempest,” and I’m sure a bunch of gals objected to the line in the chorus “Get your chicks for free,” too.

Jesú Criste, people…lighten. the. fuck. up. It’s a damn song. The whole thing is told from the perspective of a blue-collar worker who’s envious of the apparent easy lifestyle of rock stars. Mark Knopfler actually wrote it in a hardware/custom kitchen store, and the lyrics are direct quotes from the staff, who were watching MTV at the time. And really, do you honestly think that someone will change their entire outlook on certain sections of humanity because of a catchy backbeat and a nifty guitar hook? People either already agree with the sentiments, or accept it as just another tune to drum along with on the steering wheel and won’t let it affect how they treat other people.

This whole damn country has lost its perspective. No one seems to have any kind of gradations in their feelings anymore. Notice how I reacted to the editing of the song up there at the top? I was annoyed. Not raging, not inconsolable, certainly not offended. Annoyed. I didn’t fire off a letter to the editor, didn’t call the station and threaten a boycott of their advertisers because they were denying me my “right” to enjoy the entire song, and didn’t start an action group and apply for Federal funding. I didn’t even change the station. I just shook my head and wondered when we became such thin-skinned wusses that we feel threatened by a fucking song lyric.

I blame the S.L.A. The Simian Lesbian Association. You know…the chimp chick faggots.

Dog-eared Pages

We went to the library today, because I’d read everything in the house and was starting to get shaky. Mrs. Cat and I took turns watching over Cub so we could each look around in peace. I was sitting with him in the Kids’ Room, idly scanning the notices on the wall advertising their reading groups. The posters had cute doggie pictures on them, and theoretically clever captions to entice the patrons to attend. The first one had a picture of a dog in a snow drift, and the caption read: “It’s to cold! Let’s go inside and read a story!”

Really? You used the prepositional “to” instead of the adverbial “too”?

The other one that caught me showed a dog on its back in the grass, and a caption that read: “I don’t know how to read, so I just lay in the grass and listen.”

Holy shit. I hope you’re not going to be teaching grammar in these classes, because you don’t know the difference between transitive and intransitive verbs. “Lie” (intransitive – no direct object) means to recline on a surface; “lay” (transitive – takes a direct object) means to place something on a surface.

I started to go to the desk and ask if they had any grammar guides, and why weren’t they using them, but Mrs. Cat came back at that point so I could browse instead of start a fight.

I always check out the “New Fiction” shelf first, to see if there’s anything out there I missed hearing about on the grapevine. I saw two books out of a series by Justina Robson. This is the first part of the capsule description on one of them:

“Ever since the Quantum Bomb of 2015 things have been different; the dimensions have fused and suddenly our world is accessible to elves, demons, ghosts, and elementals…and their worlds are open to us. Things have been different for Special Agent Lila Black too: tortured and magic-scarred by elves, rebuilt by humans into a half-robot, part-AI, nuclear-fueled walking arsenal, and carrying the essence of a dead elven necromancer in her chest, sometimes she has trouble figuring out who she is.”

The capsule also mentions the Fae, and at some point in this series, Lila goes to Hell. I’m assuming that’s where she picked up her half demon-half elven boyfriend, who’s also an international rock star.

Are you fucking kidding me? It’s like the author took books by Tolkien, Gibson, Asimov, Rice, Hamilton and Pullman, threw them in a blender, drank the resulting mix, then vomited it into her word processor. The series may as well be called My Story Idea Stew

When I hear writers bitching about how hard it is to get published, I have to wonder if it’s not just them. Apparently you can get just about any ol’ word salad out in print.

Speaking of unnecessary books, Mascot Books is rolling out Bo, America’s Commander In Leash next week. This is just the latest in a series of books “by” or about presidential pooches. Bush’s (R-ead my lips) Millie had one. Even Ted Kennedy’s (D-iver down) dog got a deal.

It’s not really that I object to a company cashing in on all of the “excitement” the media has drummed up about that fucking dog (you know, rather than focusing on the fact that the economic underpinnings of this country have been hauled off and sold as scrap metal), but was a grammatically-correct title too much to hope for?

The publisher’s website states that the book is "the first children's book starring the most famous dog in the world."

Oh, really? So the debut of Lassie Come Home in 1940 means nothing? Clifford the Big Red Dog appearing in 1963 has been forgotten? For God’s sake, The Poky Little Puppy is sixty-seven years old (that’s 469 in dog years).

Goofy? Pluto? Marmaduke? Any of these ringing a bell? There are three-year-olds in Jakarta who can’t find the United States on a map, but I guarantee you they know who Snoopy is.

Look, you’re making money off of a temporary fixation. Great. You will include some short historical facts in order to position it as educational. Fine. But leave the hyperbole to professionals, okay?

Will the real Real Man please stand up?

I’ve been seeing a lot of articles lately on what it means to be a “Real” man. Usually, these lists are compiled by sensitive types who are desperate to be included in the category, or neo-troglodytes who revel in bodily functions.

My own list is pretty short, and falls in between those two extremes.

· A real man supports his family: financially, physically, emotionally.
This is his primary objective. All else is secondary.

· A real man keeps up with his friends’ lives.
Shared joy is doubled; shared sorrow halved.

· A real man treats real women as ladies.
And he knows which ones are worthy of it.

· A real man owns at least one weapon with which he is proficient, and knows how to keep it in good repair.
Mine’s a crowbar. Before you scoff, they are one of the best weapons in Half-Life. They don’t run out of ammo, and you can pry open locked doors with them. They are as effective on zombies as shotguns (but you do have to get closer).

All other lists aside, I’ve always liked this one from Robert Heinlein’s Time Enough for Love (you’ll notice he doesn’t specify Men or Women):

"A human being should be able to

· change a diaper
· plan an invasion
· butcher a hog
· conn a ship
· design a building
· write a sonnet
· balance accounts
· build a wall
· set a bone
· comfort the dying
· take orders
· give orders
· cooperate
· act alone
· solve equations
· analyze a new problem
· pitch manure
· program a computer
· cook a tasty meal
· fight efficiently
· die gallantly

Specialization is for insects."

As of today, I am 17/21. I need to get busy.

Return to Sender

I went by the post office today to mail off a resume. I had quite forgotten that it was tax day, so I was unprepared for the huge crush of people in the lobby. Resigning myself to waiting a while, I got to engage in that classic time-waster: people-watching.

I am constantly surprised at the number of older people that always seem befuddled by such new-fangled technology as credit card readers or automated vending machines. I always wonder if they’ve just been let out of whatever home they’ve been trapped in since the 50s. It’s not like we sprang all of this on them in one day. Surely they’ve run across these things at some point before in their lives.

Then there were the ladies that had chosen today to send out their mass mailing, and had a box full of postcards. Unsorted postcards. They couldn’t understand why the lady behind the counter wasn’t allowing them to get bulk rates, and insisted they should. It’s been about a year since I’ve done any mass mailings, and I still remember that the sorting requirement was the first item when you looked up bulk mail restrictions.

And as with any public gathering, particularly those at civil servant headquarters, there were those people that paced and muttered and gestured angrily because the line was crawling, then, when it was their turn, didn’t have everything ready to go.

At one point, a very tall redhead walked in. She had the kind of hair color that combines a deep orange with a burnished copper. You know, like someone spilled the bottle during the dye job. Anyway, she was wearing a brick-red jumpsuit-type thing and – just for one brief second – I wished I was a gay man. That way I could have told her that someone had lied to her when she got dressed this morning without the fear of getting slapped.

By this time, it was my turn to get to the counter. The postal worker seemed surprised that my envelope wasn’t addressed to a governmental agency. I commiserated with her about the extended hours she would be putting in today, paid for my stamp and left. I knew she’d get far more holidays than most office workers, so I didn’t feel too badly for her – though our mail carrier told me something surprising the other day. It seems that the post office is open for all religious holidays that fall during the weekdays, and only closes for secular ones.

And how was your day?

Best Headline Ever

Spokane parks to detonate squirrels

It seems the Finch Arboretum is being overrun with ground squirrels, so their Parks department is planning on using something called the Rodenator to kill them.

The device injects a mixture of oxygen and propane into the tunnels, then ignites it. Despite the overly dramatic (and hysterical) headline, the rodents are actually killed by the shock wave, not the fire itself.

I can’t wait to see how Peta protests this one. I picture almost naked co-eds and hookahs.

Here’s a video about the Rodenator from someone who had a lot of time…and a lot of beer.




I just hope they’re aware that squirrels can sometimes fight back.

Aphorisms are often wrong.

Today I proved that it’s actually quite easy to take candy from a baby. The trick is to wait until they’re distracted by the toys in their Easter basket.

I’m a bad bad cat.

Happy Easter, y’all.

I'm Game

I was talking to a friend of mine tonight. Nothing specific – movies, books, tv…the stuff of life, and somehow we got to talking about creating a video game together, with me writing it and him programming it.

We both like puzzle-based games like the Myst series, and we like the visuals in the steampunk genre. We also both like absurdist humor, so there is a lot of potential in our collaborating. (We’re also both currently unemployed, so we have the time.)

It’ll be interesting to see if this actually turns into something, or if it’s just one of those “You know what we should do?” conversations. Even if we never get a game out of it, I can always recycle those elements into a story. I’ve been wanting to put together a steampunk thing for a while, but haven’t had a story arc to tie in all of the diverse scenes I pictured. Coming up with a goal for a player would be a good start.

I would imagine the hardest part in creating this kind of game is coming up with original, compelling puzzles. Neal Stephenson had a good series of puzzles in his novel Diamond Age, which were all based on binary code – about as simple as you can get. The movie Labyrinth used classic brain-teasers as minor plot points, and Asimov’s I, Robot is essentially a collection of logic puzzles disguised as a story.

Writing is such an Id-based occupation, you know? Want an island fortress? Describe one. Wish you had magical powers? Presto! The goal is to find a large enough audience that wants the same things you do, and realize it to everybody’s satisfaction. There’s an economic model for creative types that states you only need 1,000 hard-core fans in order to make a good living off of your creative product. Release $50-$100 worth of stuff a year, and you’ve got yourself a pretty decent salary.

So if/when we ever get this game together, I’ll tell you, and you can tell 999 of your closest friends.

“Voila” is French for “Ta Da!”

The above koan is a gift from Kitten.

I was reminded today how much I truly love technology; a friend with stronger Google-Fu than I sent me some movies I had been trying to track down. When I opened the envelope and the discs slid into my paws, labeled with his neat handwriting, I fell into reminiscing about afternoons spent next to my AM/FM/Cassette recorder – blank tape cued up – diving for the Record button after every commercial break or station identification, because that one song was going to come on soon, and I didn’t want to miss a single note of it. Back then, the deejays didn’t talk over the entire intro or fade another song into the ending bars, so it was entirely possible to get a perfect capture if you were quick enough.

I remember making a big sign for my door that said “QUIET! RECORDING!” because my player had an external microphone, and would record any ambient noise along with the music. Many a pre-teen hissy fit was thrown because I had finally gotten a song I’d wanted, only to hear on the playback my mother calling me to dinner, or my dad pushing the lawnmower past my bedroom window. I really wanted one of those lighted “On Air” signs to mount in the hallway so everyone would know to be quiet, but they were beyond the price range of my $3 a week allowance, and no amount of hints or wheedling caused one to materialize under the Christmas tree.

When I was a little older, I got a new stereo system with a dual tape deck for my birthday. “Now you can get rid of that old one,” my Mom said, looking askance at the battered soldier on the desk in the corner. The plastic over the radio band guide was too scratched to read through, but it didn’t matter because the selector indicator didn’t move back and forth anymore. It was fine for me because I knew where the stations were in relation to one another, and could find the one I was looking for pretty quickly. The antenna was long gone, probably a casualty of falling off of my bicycle in transport to our latest fort, so I had some cheap wire leading from the antenna mount, taped up along the molding, and run out through the top window. The battery compartment cover was held on with scraps of electrical tape, and the cassette door was held to the frame by a nail.

Get rid of it? Unthinkable! Many an awesome mix tape had been patiently compiled on that machine. I could no more get rid of it than I could my left arm.

Besides…I had plans.

My new system had tripled my deck capacity, and I already knew how I was going to exploit it. I took some of my birthday money (Dear Aunt Ida, Thank You for the Money and the Card, but Mostly the Money) and bought a multi-pack of Radio Shack Red-Label High-Fidelity Audio Recording cassettes. That was the secret to my mixing success, by the way; all my other friends bought the blue label cassettes. Not that they were any worse in quality (they were all pretty mediocre), but the Blues were only sixty minutes long, and the Reds were ninety.

Later that evening, I tuned into American Top 40. I waited as Casey Kasem counted ‘em down, and when there were forty-five minutes left in the show, I pressed Record on Old Faithful and walked away, quietly shutting the door behind me.

I now had forty-five minutes’ worth of perfect captures – sure, it had commercials and Casey’s intros – but I had between four and six more songs on my cassette than my friends did on theirs. And with the new stereo system, I could dub those songs straight onto another cassette. Since I could pause either deck while I was recording, I was able to fill the entire cassette with music, never overdubbing or leaving long gaps between songs.

Not long after that, our record stores started carrying “Cassingles,” which were the deck equivalent of 45s, and I was over the moon. Studio-perfect songs that I could collect onto my own blanks – TDK Crystals by this point – with a much bigger selection than was available over the airwaves. I was probably in 8th or 9th grade before I ever bought a real album on cassette, preferring to make my own.

I’d go off to sleep watching the LEDs on the new stereo system track the beat, changing from green to red as the bass pulsed, while the flickering, fading red-orange glow of the power supply on the other side of the room reassured me that my old comrade-in-arms was there in the corner, faithfully monitoring the airwaves for me.

Because that one song was going to come on soon.

I've heard of C-Y-A, but this is ridiculous.

Well there go my plans for the weekend.

Spoilers Ahead

Can You Keep a Secret?

The past couple of weeks, there’ve been rumors circulating on the internet about a major character on a popular television show that was going to commit suicide. It was going to be an out-of-the-blue shocker, and folks were putting forth their theories on who they thought it would be and why. Now, I only watch a few shows, so I was fairly sure I would miss it, and didn’t give it much thought.

As it happened, I missed all of my favorites this week while caught up in other things. I’ve been busy with some freelance work, so I haven’t even gotten a chance to peruse the web sites I usually go to. Grabbing a quick break, I went to one of the political sites I frequent to find out what people were complaining about today, and clicked on an article that caught my eye.

The fucking author had a spoiler about the suicide! And yes, it’s on one of the shows I watch.

I had been looking forward to catching up on my shows later on this week, but that’s completely ruined now. When I watch that episode, all I’ll be thinking is “When will it happen?”

I’d really like to slap that writer. You don't give away major surprises. Ever. Selfish bastard.

Grrrrrrrr.

I Showered for This? – OR – How About No – OR – Three Strikes and I’m Out of Here

I drove over to a neighboring county today in response to a job opening they had advertised in our local fishwrap. The receptionist asked me my business, and I told her I was there to apply, handing her my résumé as I did so. She rummaged in her desk drawer, and handed me a sheet of paper in return. “Okay…you’ll need to fill out this application.” Trying to be helpful, I pointed out that all of the information they were asking for was covered in the document I’d just given her. “Well he likes it a certain way, and this is the way.” Strike one.

She directed me to an empty desk in the front office. I nodded to the woman at the desk behind it, and began filling out the badly-copied application form, thinking that the whole point of a résumé was to 1. Be professional. And 2. Avoid the duplication of effort with bullshit mimeographs. Strike two.

As I was working on it, the boss came in. He looked like the Amazing Randi, but while everyone else was dressed in Business Casual, he was dressed in Miami Casual, with jeans, a bright flowered shirt full of non-natural colors, and thick gold rope bracelets. Yes, there are perks in being the boss, but honestly? Gold rope bracelets? Not a strike, but definitely a foul.

So I finished copying the information on my résumé onto the apparent fifth-generation copy of the application (really, it was spotted, crooked, and blurry – just awful), and took it back to the receptionist. “Here you go,” I chirped, trying to keep a happy face. She starts to file them away. “Thank you,” she said. “We’ve already filled the position (nodding towards the woman I’d sat in front of), but we’ll keep this on file. Strike three.

You just wasted my time, my gas, and my effort by having me fill out an application for a job you’ve already filled? And you let me do it in front of the woman you hired for it? What kind of fucking psychological games are you playing, here? Yeah… you keep that on file, chickie. But when you call me, my first question is going to be whether you’re playing more silly-ass games, or if you’ve decided to run your office in a professional manner.

Psychopomp & Circumstance

I don't have a post to go with that title, but I really liked it, so there you go.

On the Zombie front, Mrs. Cat and I have decided that the reason they're always seeking brains is not because they're hungry, but because they're operating a tannery.

Six off the cuff

Pulls gun from garter and takes care of it

Mrs. Cat asks an interesting question: Can you think of any action film in which a woman does something incredibly dangerous to save the man she loves? When women wade into the fray, it’s usually to protect their children or the weak, or to fight for some cause or principle – and these are usually in Horrors or Dramas. Or it’s played for laughs in Comedies and Spoofs. As many movies as we’ve seen, we can’t think of a straight-up “Stand back, honey; let me handle this.” situation.

***

Hats off to stupid policies

The Pittsburg-area bank PNC has a new policy: customers must take off their hats, sunglasses and other items that might conceal their identity while inside its branches. Apparently, this is a growing trend for banks nationwide.

"Hopefully, [thieves] see that sign and will say they should go someplace else," said Margot Mohsberg, spokeswoman for the American Bankers Association.” Yeah, because people who have convinced themselves to commit a felony will be dissuaded by a laminated sign.

Bruce Spitzer, spokesman for the Massachusetts Bankers Association, said "We knew that implementing this would not solve all bank robberies. But it might prevent some.” Good thinking, Bruce. I bet if you restricted all transactions to the drive-up window, you’d cut them down even further. Once you start justifying actions with “It might prevent some (whatever)”, the line differentiating sound policy and absurdity disappears.

Now I want to rob a bank with a tree just to see the “No Trees” signs appear.

***

Challenging, but not…you know…challenging

I’m helping someone create a trivia game, and was chastised for asking too-difficult questions. Sorry, dude; I thought you wanted this to be kind of fun.

***

When verbification attacks

Shutterbugs have been hassled in Phoenix, AZ for taking pictures of downtown buildings. When asked which DHS statute they were violating (the “charge”), the helpful police officer told them to “Google it.”

***

Zero tolerance = zero intelligence

http://blog.wired.com/27bstroke6/2009/04/sexting-hysteri.html

I’m thinking the whole “sexting” scare is being blown out of proportion by the media to sell product, just like the germs stories, the shark stories, the dangerous toys stories, etc. etc.

***

More inappropriate humor

Mrs. Cat looked over at some visitors in the boneyard next door and commented; “The zombies are getting fresher.”

It's just crazy enough to work!

This floated through my e-mail today. I liked it. Unfortunately, no one in Government would actually do something this sensible.

The Patriotic Retirement Plan:

There are about 40 million people over the age of 50 in the work force today. The Patriotic Retirement Plan would pay each of them $1 million, tax free, with the following stipulations:

1) They immediately leave/retire from or otherwise exit their current jobs. Forty million job openings - Result: Unemployment Fixed.

2) They each buy one NEW American car (GM, Ford or Chrysler - ONLY) and give (i.e.: no money) their current car to a child, relative or a charity. Forty million new American cars ordered and Used Car Market hurt but stable - Result: Auto Industry Fixed.

3) They either buy a house (if they are current renters) OR pay off their Mortgage, Home Equity Lines of Credit and any other Personal Debt (Credit Cards, etc.) with the goal of being totally Debt Free at the end of the day - Result: Housing Crisis AND Personal Financial Distress Fixed.

4) Take what is left and put it into a tax sheltered IRA anunity or similar to provide many years of payments for personal need for the rest of their lives, all tax free from the get go - Result: Retirement Crisis Fixed.

***

This just in: Our local Humane Society is holding a fundraiser tomorrow. They're having a barbecue.

God I love the South.

Trivial

Apart from being featured in today's blog, what do these three videos have in common?

What’s in an Eman?

I know people have any number of reasons for choosing a particular name for their kids. Recycling family names, favorite characters, personal heroes and inspirations, religious names, etc.

We’ve all heard the “Lemonjello” and “Orangejello” story, and the one about “Female” (pronounced Fe-MAH-lee). I knew a girl in high school named Pepsi, and Penn Jillette and his wife named their daughter Moxie Crimefighter.

There is absolutely nothing wrong with out-of-the-norm names. If the kid truly hates it, it can be changed. I know a guy who thought his name – Jason – was the most boring name on Earth, so he had it changed to Logan. It suited him, and he was much happier.

But what kills me is the mom or dad that thinks reversing a common name is being clever. I’ve seen stories about “Semaj”-es and “Trebor”s, “Yllas”-es, and even an “Acire” or two. I keep hoping for an “Eel” to turn up, but no luck so far.

The one that absolutely drives me up the wall, though, is “Nevaeh.”

First off, I don’t know how to pronounce the damn thing. I always think of some swashbuckler brandishing a sword and shouting “NEVAH! Death first!”

If you want to name your daughter after Heaven, fine; go for it. She’ll end up being a stripper, but that’s not important. Reconsider, however, the choice to spell it backwards. When you reverse something, you get the opposite. I know raising kids can be trying sometimes, but naming your kid “Hell” is in poor taste.